We spent the final weekend of 2012 and welcomed in 2013 at South Beach Harbor in San Francisco. We had a beautiful trip up there from Coyote Point on Saturday the 29th. It was sunny, not too cold and not too windy. Surprisingly, we only saw two other boats the whole way (about two hours in the south bay, south of the Bay Bridge). This is not counting all the container ships anchored in the general anchorage, there were plenty of those.
Once we arrived, we decided we could check in on Sunday and we didn’t even go ashore for probably twenty hours, just hung out on the boat. We had some clam chowder for Saturday dinner and bacon and eggs for Sunday breakfast so we were all set. We enjoyed watching a DVD on Matt’s new TV with his new Blue Ray player—he got a home theater set up for Christmas! We have yet to install the speakers but we’ve started planning where to put them. The saloon TV is now permanently mounted via what was designed as a ceiling mount—though we flipped it upside down and installed it to the flat surface next to the steps down to our cabin. The old TV is now the aft cabin TV, though it is not (yet) mounted and still must be laid flat on the berth when we are underway (just in case!!).
Sunday after the aforementioned bacon and eggs, we headed ashore to check in and to find a place to watch the Forty Niners game, as unfortunately the Fox station was not coming in. We ended up at the Public House. It on the ground floor of Pac Bell Park, the SF Giants stadium. They have a great TV set up and the servers were nice. The nachos were excellent. We were camped out there for probably a good four hours. We went back to the boat after the Niners game and were able to catch the late game on the boat as THAT channel came in great.
We were expecting two other boats Monday, though actually one had arrived Sunday while we were at the Public House and we didn’t realize until we saw them on the dock Monday as we headed up for breakfast at the Java House www.javahousesf.com. They joined us and we all enjoyed a delicious (and fast) breakfast. Then they headed off to the Ferry Building and we went back to the boat to await our fabulous canvas artist, Keith McElroy. I was expecting him to just drop off our new items and be quickly on his way, but he actually had to do the final fitting of our new fender storage screens for the back of our flybridge. We’d been tying the fenders there and someone on Trawler Forum mentioned making fender bags so I decided to ask Keith to make some sort of storage solution for us. We know how creative he is so our only requirements were that the fenders not need to be tied to the rail and be covered as much as possible. What he created is above and beyond anything we could have imagined. You would never even know there are fenders in there. I will have to add a photo later.
Around the time Keith arrived, our other friends got there on their boat. After having Keith look at their boat and talk about their canvas needs, they walked down to the Ferry Building with us where we did a little shopping and celebrating. Once we got back to the boats it was time to start figuring out the timing for dinner. We started out with drinks and appetizers on one boat and ended up with dinner and fireworks (courtesy of the city of San Francisco) on our boat. We had tons of fantastic food and the fireworks show was fabulous!
Tuesday morning dawned cold and clear to ring in 2013. We headed out for Willow Berm around 10:30, expecting around a six hour trip. We actually got more current by leaving a little later but even with that it was not a really strong push. The ride was mostly uneventful expect for a couple of the very few boats we saw seemed bound and determined to run into us. The first one was just south of the Richmond San Rafael bridge. There were three boats heading south towards us from the other side of the bridge. Two of them seemed to be travelling together but they split up as they got to the bridge and I swear the one set his course straight for us. We’d veer a little to our left, he’d veer a little to his right so we were still head on, we’d veer right, he’d veer left, ETC. REALLY??? Finally I asked Matt to please make a decisive large turn one way or another because I did not trust this guy. So we made a BIG left turn then straightened back up to head for the bridge… and HE TURNED TOWARDS US AGAIN!! Then turned back to where he’d been heading before… ??? we eventually passed about 150’ apart, starboard to starboard. He was steering from his pilot house, in his shirtsleeves with his cup of coffee. Didn’t even get a wave out of him. At that point we were on our flybridge in multiple layers of clothing, pretending we weren’t freezing. We moved down below shortly after this incident and steered from below the rest of the way, until we docked at Willow Berm.
Our next interesting boat meeting experience was just after we turned onto New York Slough at Pittsburg. One entrance to Pittsburg Marina is on the right shortly after this turn. There were two boats heading towards us after we turned. One was clearly going to the marina. The other was well to the other side of the slough and off to our left and I figured he was continuing on. I was a little unsure of his intentions though so I slowed down. Glad I did because he suddenly made a sharp left and cut right in front of us. I swear it felt like he was less than a hundred feet in front of us!! I made a hard left as well to avoid him and Matt laid on our horn. Matt does not think the guy even saw us. The boat then proceeded to cut off the other boat that was also headed into the marina. I don’t know if the skipper was drunk, blind, hung over, stupid, and/or oblivious??? Luckily that was it for the collision avoidance type entertainment for the day.
We were almost to the Antioch Bridge when someone started hailing “anyone” on channel 16. Something along the lines of “this is Master Baitor, does anyone copy?” Finally the Coast Guard responded. He told the Coast Guard responder that he was trying to find the Pittsburg Marina and couldn’t locate it. We seriously did not thingkthe Coast Guard would respond to that. The original responder from San Francisco must have made a quick call as someone from Coast Guard Station Rio Vista then got on and asked the guy to switch and answer on 21 Alpha. To which this ace skipper responded “10-4 good buddy”. Not wanted to miss any of the fun of THIS, we switched to 21A to continue following this saga. Rio Vista was hailing for “person looking for Pittsburg Marina” and getting no response. We switched back to 16 and soon heard the Coast Guard trying again on that channel. Sure enough, our lost skipper was still there. Guess he had no idea what it meant to switch channels?? Surprised he even knew how to use the VHF. He commenced to complain to the Coast Guard how hard the marina was to find and how well hidden it was. Unfortunately they gave him the phone number to the station and asked him to call in so we didn’t get to find out if he managed to find the marina. Again not sure if the skipper was drunk, blind, hung over, stupid, and/or oblivious??? Did he BRING charts with him? Hell we could find the marina with the $10.00 Navionics app on the iPhone.
We saw a few more boats after we passed under the Antioch Bridge but luckily they all stayed a safe distance away! Sunset was just before 5 and luckily the twilight lingered long enough to give us a bit of light as we pulled into our slip around 5:30. Our neighbors on the end tie were in their saloon watching something on their positively humongous TV (which goes well on their 58’ boat) but Steven still came out and helped us tie up. He always does when he is there, which is so nice of him! We managed to arrive at not only almost exactly dark but it also seemed to be almost exactly slack water so we were able to pull in and get tied up without incident. However we had discovered some water on the floor in the aft cabin and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. We’d wiped it up and had it reappear three times on the trip back. We asked Steven to check the boat this morning and see if that spot was wet again. He reported it was dry so we will have a mystery to investigate when we are back. Its always something, after all.
So 1600 words and I haven’t even told you that we installed two small LED lights in the ceiling of the aft cabin and finished sealing all the cracks in the shower floor! I’ll have to take a bunch more pictures as all I have is Matt installing lights and something to show you the chop by the Naval Weapons station in Concord.
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